


because i'm clever!

by natalunasans



Series: The Gates of Commitment Unwired [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Fix-It, Friendship, Gen, Impostor Syndrome, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Nonbinary Character, Other, Overwhelmed, UNIT, Villain problems, artificial heart, cyber parts, cyborg problems, new job angst, villain trying to be a person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-13 01:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12972402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalunasans/pseuds/natalunasans
Summary: Bill visits with 'Razor' and his Doctor, while worrying about her new entry-level position at UNIT.had to write this because i saw some gifs fromthe doctor fallsand got upset again





	1. Positive attitude

**Author's Note:**

> i DO plan to finish the other two 10/S!M stories that are left WiP but i just needed to get this one out there, too, because i had a lot of ideas about how it must be going for Bill in her new job, and about an important conversation she needed to have with 'Razor'. sorry about all the loose ends at once, though.
> 
> PS: this one is like half written, ie: the beginning and the parts near the end... but i need to write like ~~ch.2 and~~ the actual end. ~~probably?~~

“Hello my dear!” Mister Razor’s accent greets Bill through the slightly open TARDIS door, but it’s her undisguised ex-flatmate that motions her inside. She knows he can’t show his face in London, especially to her superiors at UNIT, and at least part of why, but he seems unbothered… grinning at any excuse for spy games.

In her travels with her original Doctor, Bill would’ve been nervous alone in that other TARDIS with Missy, waiting for the Doctor to return. But she feels more comfortable with ‘Razor’ than she ever did with her Doctor, _or even his_ , and they chat easily about the plans for today’s excursion. Bill has gone travelling with him and his Doctor enough times that she’s used to the very different control room behind the familiar blue doors. More antiques-flea-market than industrial kitchen, their ‘decor’ shows this Doctor’s nostalgia. Do they hold tight to the past because of all they’ve lost, because they’re afraid to lose even more?

After she figured out Mister Razor’s secret identity, he gave her a small tour of his TARDIS beyond the area disguised as the hospital technician’s flat. Knowing what a neat-freak he is in his real life, she’s still surprised both that he puts up with the Doctor’s hoarding and that he could play the role of someone equally untidy without it driving him mental. Well… _more_ mental. He never claimed to be entirely sane.

She’s missed them, the two Gallifreyans that she can actually depend on, but Bill almost cancelled today. All the indicator lights on her heart say everything is working fine, but she’s been feeling just… wrong… for at least a week. The cyber part of her weighs heavier again and she’s been queasy and tired. Maybe it’s just work. She’s been out of her depth at UNIT from day one, but more so lately. Everyone seems to be doctor this and brigadier that and Bill… hasn’t even finished uni. Of course UNIT are paying for her classes, but even with only one course per term, she’s swamped in readings and technical things she never expected to need to know. And even with all she’s learning, the actual applications of interplanetary contact and ethics (and especially the surrounding bureaucracy!) that she has to deal with at UNIT HQ are so much more complex… she feels like she’s only just barely managing, on the best of days.

On the other hand, Bill would love to catch the eye of that cute scientific advisor that pops through her department sometimes to pick up test results or specimens. She’s certainly caught Bill’s eye, with her round, pleasant, dark-skinned face framed by spiky straightened hair, and the dapper menswear outfits under her lab-coat. But the scientist is obviously always on her way to somewhere terribly important, and never so much as looks in Bill’s direction. Bill was hoping to be noticed doing or saying something clever, but the way things are going so far, she’d settle for less-below-average.

She also quite desperately wants the rather dazzling Dr. Martha Jones to be proud of her, or at least to not regret hiring her on just the Doctor’s recommendation. Doctor Martha Jones, the legend, the one that saved the Earth more than once. Although she never talks about it and the rumours lack detail, still it rings true. In meetings and briefings, people actually listen when Dr. Jones talks, and people from other divisions wish she was their boss. Maybe it’s her quiet confidence, the way she quickly earns the trust of people from any species, or her eyes that have seen more than one person ever should, but somehow still come out smiling.

Even Razor respects Doctor Martha Jones, but the respect is (apparently deservedly) _not mutual_ , as he’s cautioned Bill never to mention his continued existence to anyone at UNIT, but especially not to her.

Bill’s wondering if maybe she shouldn’t even talk about her difficulties to the Gallifreyans either, for fear of seeming both unworthy and ungrateful. But it would be nice to be able to confide in _someone_. She will at least ask to sleep over, as usual. The convenient thing of being based in the vortex, is that when she visits them she can get an extra day or so of rest and be brought back to her own time just around when she left.

 

Razor must be having a low-pain day, because he’s moving and talking very quickly for once. He darts around the console room readying the controls for today’s adventure, and it takes him a little while to notice that Bill can’t quite keep up.

“Engine still… ticking along?” He gestures, too casually, at where the device barely shows through her top.

Ever since their time on the Mondasian ship, she’s taken to wearing looser clothes than the camisoles and body-conforming jumpers she used to prefer… _before_. Everyone at UNIT might know she’s That Girl With The CyberTech Heart, and it’s not that she’s ashamed of it, but there’s less pressure this way, in both senses of the word.

In the Cyberhospital, sure there were some jealousies, with the fully cyberised envying those who had more organic parts left and the partials like her envying how indestructible the full-cybers would be once they adapted to their ‘upgrades’. But everyone had the solidarity of shared experience.  Here, even in London, she could be looked at as a curiosity or a freak, so… people in her building or in the street needn’t know her cyborg status straight away.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Bill shrugs and half-smiles, eyebrows raised.

Razor looks at her intently. “Quick scan, just in case?”

“Yeah, alright.” But the scanner on the TARDIS console shows nothing unexpected, medical or mechanical.

 

While they wait for the Doctor to come back so they can dematerialise, Razor pulls out two insulated mugs from a compartment in the console and shoves one at her.

“Hey, what would you’ve given me if I’d ever asked for The Bad Tea?”

“Coffee. I was saving it all for me,” he says, raising his mug with _almost_ a straight face. Just that one twitching eyebrow betrays him.

Bill punches him on the arm and he flinches, mostly in surprise.

“Oi! I am olt and veak, dunt tek advaentage!”

His self-deprecating humour isn't _only_ meant to make her laugh. If it’s all a game, he doesn’t have to admit that getting close to people is painful.

She wishes _she_ had a spare persona like his Mister Razor, to stand between _the real Bill Potts_ and the world, but being one person is confusing enough. She can’t even get her face to stop broadcasting her every reaction right as it goes through her mind, let alone pretend to be someone else.


	2. Allons-y

The TARDIS door bangs open as a swirl of long coat and longer limbs hurtles through and resolves itself into the Doctor. Their grin at seeing Bill is almost as wide as hers: “You made it! Brilliant! All ready to go?” The Doctor hasn’t stopped moving and by now is round the other side of the console room, planting a quick kiss on Razor’s head. He growls perfunctorily but doesn’t even try to duck away.

“On y va!” Bill replies, deliberately updating the Doctor’s favourite phrase. _Some_ people have studied French in the twenty- _first_ century. “By the way, where are we going?”

“I thought we might just go looking for trouble,” but their asymmetrical eyebrows and irrepressible smile are too easy to read.

It’s a surprise then.

Because at least she can trust that this Doctor has learnt not to bring her, or Razor for that matter, along without some planning. There _will_ be a way to get back to the TARDIS or someplace to rest. The TARDIS herself _won’t_ have brought them to the usual sort of places full of hidden dangers; the sentient timeship knows the Doctor does that kind of adventures alone now (although they always seem to collect new ‘friends’ in the process, most of whom they’ll never see again).

That’s what she was supposed to be for _her_ Doctor, Bill thinks. But by some weird combination of chance and force of will, she became a lucky or unlucky exception.

* * *

Usually the Doctor and Bill go exploring while Razor stays in the TARDIS, shooing them out the door with plenty of snark about how nice and quiet it’ll be without the Doctor wittering on about anything and everything. How much reading or work on his own projects he’s going to get done. She knows he probably goes right back to bed instead of doing any of that. In the Cyberhospital the two of them spent most of their time hiding out in his flat so the Surgeon’s people couldn’t force them to work when they weren’t up to it. Since returning to earth, Bill has gradually got a bit stronger and has learnt to manage her implant’s settings and her own energy levels. Razor seems more content, less anxious now that he’s voluntarily back with his Doctor, but if anything he’s been ill even more often than he was in the Mondasian ship. She wonders if he’s getting worse, if proving his independence took more out of him than he lets on, but she doesn’t find the right moment to ask.

* * *

 So it’s rare that Razor manages to come along on adventures like he has today, and Bill notices the different dynamic straight away. When it’s just her and the Doctor, they take her serious when she says she’s hit her limit, and won’t push her beyond what she can manage, so that’s something. But when Razor’s there, it seems natural for the old flatmates to go back to their sort of buddy-system, where they’re always aware of each other’s body language. It’s what let her feel relatively safer in the Cyberhospital than in her Doctor’s TARDIS, even though by all logic she shouldn’t have felt safe anywhere at all.

Of course even Razor’s Doctor, for all they try, doesn’t get it. They haven’t got the frame of reference, just as Bill herself hadn’t… _before_ , when pain or fatigue used to be things you could just… sleep off and feel better the next day.

The Doctor is protective of Razor, and in some ways more so of her. But it’s not quite the same, in a way she finds obvious but difficult to explain. It’s like… the Doctor is worrying from outside, about things they don’t personally understand, while she and Razor are looking out for each other because they know what it’s like. The Doctor tries to guess when their partner or their new friend might be having trouble, but they miss all the subtle tells. Like when Razor starts getting impatient and then goes quiet? That’s one. Or when Bill starts checking the display on her cyberheart all the time, she often realises later that she subconsciously felt something about to go wrong.

* * *

The Doctor’s TARDIS has brought them to a pleasant but unremarkable forest on an earthlike planet (not Mondas, she checked), and they spend a pleasant but unremarkable time exploring.  
Bill tries to decide if she misses ‘real adventures’, but her mind is taken up with noticing the small, supposedly unremarkable things… the textures of mosses and colours of stones, the scale of the trees and boulders, all the curious life-forms that the Doctor shows her.

She shrieks out loud when she sees something straight out of one of her textbooks, that was supposed to be extinct on earth. She hopes her biology lecturer won’t mind that her email includes a selfie with the plant, but Bill thinks the prof will forgive the informality because she also includes a promise of some sprouts, since the Doctor is pretty sure it won’t be a problem.

* * *

The Doctor climbs up boulders like a kid, and calls to the others to follow. Every so often Razor looks at Bill with a question in his eyes, and she signals that she’s okay. They rest when they feel like it, sat on warm rocks looking out over a river far below. At some point Razor curls up with his hat over his eyes and sleeps like a cat in the sun.

When the three stop for lunch, all the biscuits have mysteriously disappeared and the Doctor claims innocence, but finds two generous sandwiches still intact and hands them over. Bill and Razor try without success to get them to admit eating half the picnic themself, but the Doctor’s barely contained laughter when they swear they never saw any chocolate chip cookies is both so obvious and so contagious that noone can stay mad at them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalialove/27391313429/in/album-72157691229132875/)   
>  [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalialove/27391459629/in/album-72157691229132875/)   
>  [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalialove/24307840277/in/album-72157691229132875/)   
>  [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalialove/39138794172/in/album-72157691229132875/)


	3. Prepare for the horror to come

The Doctor has dropped the two of them back at the TARDIS and gone back out.

Their default place to unwind seems to be the library, really just a grander version of the book-filled sitting room in Mister Razor’s flat where they always used to take refuge.

“So it’s not just that you’re some intergalactic ex-villain that was PM for like 15 minutes? My boss really hates you personally, yeah?” Bill should really know better than to ask this, but in her defence it was bound to come up eventually.

The Master makes a bitter sound that’s almost a laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Why?”

“What d’you mean, why?”

“It’s a question. I’m curious.”

“You know who I w-- who I am…”

“I know some of that. I know you now. And I know there’s more to this.”

“I did a lot of things to hurt the Doctor. I’ve always done things to hurt the Doctor. Sometimes I chose to hurt them through hurting their friends.”

“So when you said you’d considered killing me…”

“It’s a bad idea, strategically speaking, to kill their companions definitively. There are a few things the Doctor wouldn’t forgive, and I think that would be crossing a line.”

“I’ve got… so many questions right now.”

“Let’s stick to the big ones, shall we? Yes, I killed this one annoying immortal American bloke. Yes, he came back. Repeatedly. He’s fine, you’ll probably meet him next time he visits UNIT. Always chatting up the nearest sentient being, and for some reason lots of them fancy him back. Just tell ‘im how much you only like girls and you’ll be exempt, though. Anyway, other than that, I try not to kill anyone the Doctor cares about.”

“Okay… I mean, NOT OKAY, what the hell, Razor?! But like…” for once Bill is left momentarily speechless; she waves her hands and scrunches up her face.

The Master rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically. “Let’s get the rest of this inquisition over with.”

“What did you do… to Doctor Martha Jones? What did you do… that your Doctor forgave you for… but she never could?”

The Master hesitates. He could tell a convincing lie; Bill isn’t likely to check his story with his Doctor. He could tell only the convenient parts of the truth. He could even exaggerate the level of pain he’s in, and use Bill’s kindness to escape the conversation.

But that’s the thing… In the whole year that she was stuck with him in the Mondasian ship, he had never feared Bill’s betrayal, not even after she figured out who he was and could easily have ratted him out to the authorities as resistance or to the cyber-resistance as a meddling renegade Gallifreyan, nor even after she was free and set up in a new life in London, working with his sworn enemies. He _could_ take the coward’s way out, but that would mean being bested by humans _again_.

So, where to start? How to make her understand? He reaches out, both hands towards her head: “I’ll show you.” He’s infodumped to her before; it’s no big deal. “No delete, no download, only upload,” he says, echoing one of the permission shorthands they’d developed for mental contact, that had become even more useful once the Cyberpeople had control of their own hivemind.

Bill pushes away his hands: “No, I need you to tell me. With words, like a person.”

He knows she doesn’t mean that he’s any less of a person when he goes nonverbal, he knows she means as equal to equal, like a non-telepath or… whatever her lot think of as ‘regular people’. How dare she, a mere human! Which is to say, it stings.

He realises with a start that today is not about his feelings. Bill Potts is good. She has been trying her hardest, persisting, surviving, for what seems to her like ages, even if it looks like an insect’s life span to him or the Doctor. She has done her best, but the universe has not rewarded her in kind. The Master is not the sort of person to side with the universe when the universe is clearly mistaken. So he starts talking, because today he can.

“Imagine, if you will, the End of the Universe.”

“Milliways?”

“I wish. But no, there was no nice restaurant there… Nothing nice at all, except an overworked and underappreciated insectoid assistant.

“There was an old man, well, old for a human, which is what he thought he was. He despaired of helping the other humans escape to an off-planet Utopia. And then the Doctor showed up to help, and they and the old man really hit it off. The Doctor was falling for him, you could see it in the way they looked at him.

“But the Doctor didn’t arrive alone at the end of the Universe. While the Doctor and the immortal were helping out with something dangerous, Martha Jones noticed that the old man had a device like the one the Doctor had used to hide themself away as a human. This set off a… series of unfortunate events.”

“So you’re blaming her?! For… whatever happened next?”

“All my choices were my own.”

“I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

“You wouldn’t be my dearest human, Bill Potts, if you did.”

Bill makes that amazing face where her smile is like a question. Is this the last time he’ll see her smile at him? And since when does he care?! She’s bound to hate him even more than she hates her Doctor, after she finds out what he’s really like.

“The old man realises he’s The Master, he fatally wounds his loyal assistant, she returns the favour. He regenerates into--” (he indicates his own face with a flourish, and flashes her his best madman’s grin) “ME!”

“Meanwhile I’ve stolen the Doctor’s TARDIS. I go back to earth, get married, get involved in local politics, and before you know it, I’m Prime Minister.”

“Didn’t you kill some MPs?”

“In my defence, they were terrible people. But that’s not why I killed them.”

This time it’s like Bill’s forcing a smile, maybe to keep him talking. Embarrassingly, it works.

“I thought it would be fun.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

She grimaces like a teacher looking at the solution of a carelessly-worked maths problem. “You’re… that’s just… wrong.”

“Been hearing that all my life.”

“Bollocks. I’m not saying you’re mental, or ‘wired wrong’. We know that, and it’s not a problem. I’m saying you’re WRONG. Like… bad logic, yeah?”

“I shall take that under advisement,” but a hint of Mister Razor’s accent slips in.

“Don’t mess me about.” Bill’s voice is stern. “What happened next?”

“Lucy and I had travelled back and forth to the end of the universe. We’d seen the failure of the Utopia escape plan. We decided to give the future humans a last chance: to become weapons and avenge themselves on their ancestors. Who wouldn’t take that gamble, if it meant survival?!”

“I guess they did?”

“Yeah. In their defence, I was very persuasive. I also forced the Doctor’s TARDIS to act as a paradox machine--”

“Oh, because the future humans… were going to… kill…? the present humans… that they’re descended from?”

“That’s my clever Bill!”

“This isn’t funny. You’re talking about killing people. Real live human people.”

He puts on a serious face, hoping it’s sincere enough. Should he tell her that at the time he didn’t understand that humans were people? That he only just barely believes it now? Does it matter? He’s been around humans for several lifetimes, mostly in the company of the Doctor, who credited them with at least some level of personhood… If the Master didn’t know, it was because he had decided not to. And if he does know now? That’s also by force of will. Explaining all this to himself is one thing, explaining it to a human is something entirely more tricky.

“Remember my main objective was to hurt the Doctor. So I set out to hurt their friends, and make the Doctor watch. I had Martha Jones’ flat blown to bits, and had the authorities… collect her family and lock ‘em up. The timing was perfect, as she and the Doctor and the immortal bloke saw them being arrested. That put some fear into them. The Doctor phoned me up and we had an awf’ly nice chat about the Time War; they begged me to stop taking over the Earth; I held my ground, insulted their friends, then told them to run… and they ran.”

He realises that the ‘year that never was’ is much clearer in his memory than any of the events surrounding the botched resurrection, and many since. His pulses have quickened, he hears the jovial confidence in his own voice: the thrill of those days is still with him. It was a level of success against the Doctor that he’d rarely reached before or since. He managed to stay one step ahead of them, for quite a while. Of course, not for long enough.

“Wait. Why did you care about the future-humans?”

“Wot?” Bill’s question has brought him back abruptly.

“Why did you want to give them a chance?”

“Oh, just a clever pretext,” he says in Mister Razor’s accent, then switches back. “I needed some novel --and desperate-- allies to use against the Doctor’s favourite planet, that’s all.”

“Okay…”

“Don’t try to imagine me better than I was. That old man was a fiction, he wasn’t me.”

“But you lived as him for… what? Like sixty or seventy years?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been me for hundreds. And as soon as I found myself again, my first acts were what you’d probably call… murder and abuse of power.”

“I see.” She doesn’t imply that there’s anything okay about what he’s telling her, but her emotional energy doesn’t push him away, either. She’s still waiting.

He’s almost impatient for Bill to pass final judgment on him. There’s a familiar sensation: he knows he’s eventually going to ruin everything, because that’s what he does, he ruins things. Because that’s who he is. And the whole time, the situation is building towards that crash, that explosion. Towards the moment when he will make them hate him. It will happen with the Doctor, it will happen with Bill… There’s dread, but also a rush of expectation, knowing that very soon, all sorts of deliciously violent emotions will be aimed at him.

Any moment now.

“After I had the Doctor and their friends captured, I revealed the future humans in their new mysterious form, named after something from a Gallifreyan fairy tale. As far as the present humans knew, this was First Contact with Aliens. The first public act of my ‘little friends’ was taking out the American president--”

Bill’s eyes have gone wide. “Hey, erm, --”

“No, I can’t do that again, pliz dun’t esk.”

“What is the point of you, Razor?!”

He’s pretty sure from the way her mouth and eyebrows quirk up that Bill is at least sort of joking. “Goot kvestion, my dear,” he laughs it off.

But of all the things people who are not the Doctor have said to him, this is one that will ring in his memory… right alongside Martha Jones’ derisive laughter, just when he thought he’d won…

And of course now is when it decides to get loud in his head. The noise insists: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four… he can’t help filling it in with words… this-is-your-fate, you-al-ways-lose…

He resumes his story in a rush, to finish while he can: “I aged the Doctor until they were old and powerless, or should have been. Martha Jones escaped, walked the Earth for a year preparing my defeat, and meanwhile I used her family as servants,” he plows ahead without looking at Bill, “and the immortal as… a plaything. I killed a small percentage of the human race and kept the rest working on my plot to invade other worlds. I did everything I could think of to push the Doctor to react, but instead I got poker face and complete radio silence. Couldn’t even hear their mind, but I didn’t need to, to know how disappointed they were. I used to get so frustrated, I’d take it out on Lucy. She ended up killing me, of course, so… I s’pose that’s a point for her side.”

“Oi, back up.”

This is it. He braces himself.

“You used Doctor Jones’ family as servants? Servants,” she repeats, not even shouting. Her voice is dull with disappointment. “Knowing our history, knowing what that would feel like for Black people in the 21st century --or any century, really-- you still did that… on purpose. You…” She sighs. He’s let her down just like her Doctor did. “And you abused your wife?” She pauses, probably trying to determine if he’s even worth arguing with. “What kind of shit aliens are you lot, anyway? You’re meant to be better than humans. More advanced, more civilised. But then you’re just, like… space-Victorians.”

Camouflage. Be clever. Throw in pop culture references, however dated. “Maybe we’re better at being worse. We’ve lots of prejudices of our own and guess what? We’ve also got the power to reproduce everyone else’s bad ideas harder - better - faster - stronger.” The song lyrics echo the rhythm that’s rising harder louder faster stronger in the back of his head.

“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Never stopped humans,” he snaps.

“Fair enough, but… remember that thing I told you from Spiderman?”

“That’s older than your society, let alone your comic books.”

“With great power comes great responsibility!” says Bill, triumphantly.

“Well, the Doctor got _their_ power back, and tried to forgive me. Even for what I’d done to other people. An arrogant gesture, don’t you think? ‘Course, I’d just been dictator of a planet… _again_ , so not like I can say much. They reversed the paradox, undid all my work. Only those of us at the centre of the events still remembered. Martha Jones’ mum wanted to shoot me, understandably, but the Doctor didn’t let her. Then Lucy did the deed instead. Guess I underestimated the lot of ‘em.”

“That’s what you think your mistake was? Seriously?!”

“Strategically speaking.”

“What about, like, humanly speaking?”

He gives her a look.

“People, whatever!”

He can’t fake being okay anymore, but he doesn’t want her pity or even her empathy, not right now. “D’you seriously expect me to answer that?” His voice has gone as dull as hers.

Bill looks at him again the way she looked at her Doctor. “No, I s’pose I don’t.” She doesn’t leave the room, but deliberately turns away to poke around in a nearby bookshelf.

So _he_ has to leave. He manages not to stumble until he gets into the corridor.

The whole build-up of emotion has gone off like a damp squib, and the Master is left confounded, with nothing to distract him from the building pressure in his head. This is how it sometimes goes with his Doctor, too. No explosion of anger, no electric surge of energy, no reward. They just quietly, sadly, wait for him to change. As if he’d ever give them the satisfaction.

Is this what being a regular person is like?! Having _multiple_ other real people in your life whose distress makes you sad as well? Sod that for a lark.

He looks around for a warm place to wait out the flare-up, and the Doctor’s TARDIS takes pity on him once again, making his room much closer than it normally would be. He locks the door, burrows under covers and digs fingertips into his scalp, still always searching for the point that would unlock relief.

When the worst of the pain has passed, he’s shivering in his own cold sweat under multiple duvets. Waiting for the rest of his mind to come out of the fog, he eventually remembers the universe’s wrongness, and his plan to disoblige it. His working memory may be shit, but he’s not going to let that stop him from succeeding where the Doctor has failed.

Bill Potts is a damaged person. Like him, she’s been drawn to and hurt by both the Doctor and the universe. _Unlike_ him, she’s a good person who deserves all the nice things, but she’s also a trustworthy person who deserves to know the truth, and just now the truth is rather the opposite of good things. Are these the sort of dilemmas regular people have? Everything is so small in scale, but the implications, once you decide other people matter, are still massive.

It’s too dangerous to change his past, but he can adjust his present and his future. He can continue reminding the Doctor not to hurt their friends. He can even pretend to be good, if that’s what it takes for _him_ to avoid hurting _his_ people. He is still even more stubborn than he is defective: he _can_ do this by force of will.

The pressure is building again in his head; he daren’t let it, not this soon. He drums his fingers on his skull in varying patterns that weave around the other rhythm to turn off his thoughts, and eventually the heaviness of exhaustion pulls him back into sleep.


	4. People people people

After the hyperalertness of trying to navigate a discussion with Razor, the weight of all the new information conspires to leave Bill mentally limp and unexpectedly drowsy. Why must she always have the wrong reactions to things?! Should she have shown her disappointment as anger? Would it have made a difference? With Razor’s Doctor still occupied elsewhere, she takes the opportunity to sleep over, and their TARDIS finds her usual room for her.

There’s so much to digest that Bill ends up leaving the job to her unconscious.

In dreams, she’s back on her Doctor’s TARDIS, exploring the corridors, occasionally running into Nardole (who looks away) or Missy (who looks her straight in the eyes and smiles with someone else’s smile). She finally finds her Doctor, who seems content to share a quick hug with her and then continue looking for trouble on a galactic scale. Conspicuously absent in these dreams is Razor, except for his cheshire-cat grin borrowed by Missy. Nothing happens, exactly, and that’s the problem. She’s left with an uneasy feeling, like maybe she imagined most of her recent life. She wakes up, sees the organic surfaces and hears the different hum of Razor’s Doctor’s TARDIS, and goes back to sleep. She dreams again that Razor (but it isn’t him, at least… it’s not the him that she knows) has turned her over to the Surgeon to be forcibly cyberised. Her own (but not really hers) metallic scream wakes her up.

Still shaking the grim visuals out of her mind, Bill finds her bedside table crowded with a thermos of (good) tea and a covered plate of still-hot scones with cream and jam on the side.

There’s a note under the tray that she finds after she’s done eating: “LIBRARY?”, in a bold but slightly uneven shouty uppercase she’d recognise anywhere. The question-mark is a nice touch. She could decline, but they both know she won’t. It was curiosity that got her into associating with TimeLords in the first place, curiosity that led her to doubt their original stories and figure out who and what they really were, and it’s partly curiosity that keeps her going back. But only partly.

It’s probably a bad idea to get attached to people from another world. It’s already got her ‘killed’ once and almost-killed so many times she’s lost count. But there’s something about them, about seeing beyond her own planet, about knowing that aliens aren’t just sci-fi, that they’re fairly fucked-up people just like humans… She wouldn’t trade it, not even to have her biological heart back. Plus, these two? They actually look out for her. There haven’t even been that many humans she could say that about.

She likes, and weirdly still trusts, the Razor she knows. The one who, after all, has earned her trust by behaving as a friend, even if he’ll never admit to being one.

That Harry Saxon, though, can get in the bin. If she’s lucky... he’s already gone.

 

It’s a wonder she got as much sleep as she did. Her chest hurts in the dull way that she knows by now doesn’t ‘mean anything,’ it’s just a fact of having cyber-parts, and she feels both mentally and physically slow. At least breakfast has got her some energy back, but she’s glad the Doctor isn’t around offering any more adventures.

When Bill reaches the TARDIS library, she sees Razor from the back, bent over a table. Hunched into layers of jumpers, leaning on the furniture: he must not be feeling so great, either. He doesn’t turn around just yet, although he’s got to have heard her come in. When he does face her, his eyes are hollow and dark but he’s summoned up a broad smile.

Bill tries to do the same, but as Razor gives her a once-over, his eyebrows pinch together in worry. Does she look as tired as he does?

He motions her to an extra-comfortable sofa, a nest-like one where she knows they’ll sink into the velvet cushions. “Come, sit. Rrrrest.”

“I’ve only just got up.”

“Sometimes… the sleepink is hard work.” What sort of dreams must _he_ have?!

“Too right!” Bill pulls a face in agreement, and snuggles into one corner of the sofa. It’s nice. Warm. Even softer than she thought it would be. She pushes off her trainers onto the carpet and pulls her knees up to her chest, avoiding pressure on the cyberheart by reflex now.

Razor has taken the other corner and sits cross-legged with slippered feet tucked under him. He rubs distractedly at his shins and knees through worn jeans.

Once both are as comfortable as they’re going to get, Razor clears his throat. “When I say underestimating…”

“Yeah?”

He has grabbed a first edition from the Doctor’s sci-fi collection, and he takes out a sharpie from his own pocket.

Bill opens her mouth to protest, until she sees the name on the spine and remembers what an all-round bigot that author was, then says under her breath, “you know what, never mind.”

Razor finds a mostly blank page and draws a series of concentric circles, each with one or more names in it. His hands shake badly whenever he pauses. He fights the unsteadiness by drawing the circles quickly, so there’s no time for the line to falter, and using his own odd abbreviations.

Bill watches.

This is how he used to explain things to her back in the Mondasian ship, especially when he had some words, but not quite enough. Less self-assured than the lecturing-professor style of diagrammes that her Doctor used to draw, Razor’s illustrations are similarly minimalist, but with the edge of urgency of someone who cannot always count on being understood.

When he’s finished, he points, jabbing the marker-lid into the page with each category:

“Different kinds pipple. This, _before_ , okey?” She knows that using Mister Razor’s voice is also a strategy for more efficient communication, not because he can dispense with grammar, but so he can say things ‘The Master’ wouldn’t. Feelings and stuff.

From the centre outwards, “Me, Significant People, Useful People, Insignificant People, Non-People.”

The only name in the second circle from the center is ‘Dr’. There are less than five names in the Useful People circle and she suspects that two of them are TARDISes. ‘Gallifrey’ is scrawled in English in the last circle, and with Non-People he points to the background of the page, labelled “other”.

“Clear, yes? Like the borscht?”

“Erm…”

“Now, _aefter_.” He flips some pages and draws a new set, with one more circle this time:

“Me, My People, People Like Me, Useful People, Insignificant People, Non-People.”

Insignificant People now includes ‘other sentients’, and there are still a small assortment of names she doesn’t recognise in Useful People.

The new circle, People like Me, contains ‘defectives (sentient)’, which she understands as his shorthand for _disabled people of all sentient species_. He’s being rude to keep up appearances of not caring, but he wouldn’t have made the choices he did in the Cyberhospital if this solidarity weren’t real.

The smaller My People circle, though, has three names in it now: the Doctor is still there, of course, but Razor has added the symbol for his own TARDIS and… ‘Bill Potts’.

“What’s this mean?”

His face falls. “Do I have to spell it out?” His own voice, quieter than Mister Razor’s.

“I’d like that.”

He remains silent, and as Bill looks at him directly, he avoids eye contact, instead fidgeting with the Doctor’s TARDIS key that he always wears on a chain round his neck.

“Oh my god, Razor, are you _embarrassed_?!”

He makes a face like he’s just eaten something sour.

“Now, don’t think I’ve ‘gone good’ as other me would say. I just… I can’t be arsed anymore. Being a proper villain took a lot of energy, even when I wasn’t… _like this_. Let’s say… my priorities have changed.”

He does sound infinitely tired. And it hurts to see how even now, after all this time, after helping her adjust to being newly disabled, he still finds it so hard to talk about being ill himself.

But, following a hunch, Bill presses just a little further: “And…?”

“And, I have people now.”

“And…?”

“And I will fucking obliterate anyone who hurts my friends.”

Bill tries not to laugh with surprise, “Not quite the way I was expecting to hear a declaration of friendship, but okay.”

“Consider the source!”

She does laugh now. “You’d check first, though, yeah?”

“Check what?”

“Before… _obliterating_ ,” she mimics his vicious tone, even knowing that on some level he’s dead serious.

“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Potts. Yeah, okay. But only because you’re special.”

She scoots over and flings her arms round him before either of them can think too much.

He gives her a surprisingly enthusiastic squeeze round the shoulders, especially considering how much it probably hurts him to move right now. It’s still as awkward as ever to avoid pressing on her cyberheart, but they manage.

He must be as aware as she is, that it’s the first time she’s hugged him since figuring out that he was (sort of) the same person as Missy and the same… species of person as her Doctor. You don’t hug a proton radiation storm… until you do.

“You know _I_ can’t forgive you for things you’ve done to other people.”

“You know I don’t want that. From anyone.”

“Just so long as we’re clear on that.”

“Yeah.”


End file.
